Live: Israel delays release of 602 Palestinian prisoners

Two Palestinian women and an unborn child have been killed by Israeli forces during a raid on Nour Shams refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. 

Sundus Jamal Shalabi, 23, who was eight months pregnant, and her unborn baby were shot and killed by Israeli gunfire on Sunday morning, the Palestinian health ministry said. 

Shalabi's husband was critically injured in the attack.

Medical teams were unable to save Shalabi and her unborn child due to Israeli forces blocking access, according to the ministry.

The Palestinian foreign affairs ministry said Shalabi's death was the latest example of the Israel military's targeting of civilians. 

Read more: Israeli forces kill two Palestinian women and unborn child in Nour Shams

In an interview with Fox News, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu praised US President Donald Trump’s proposal to forcibly displace and “relocate” Gaza's population to Jordan and Egypt.

Trump first proposed the idea on 25 January, later adding that the US would "take over" Gaza to turn it into a “Riviera of the Middle East".

"I think that President Trump’s proposal is the purest, freshest idea in years. It has the potential to change everything in Gaza,” Netanyahu told Fox News. 

“We come in[to Gaza], we slap them, we smack them, then we leave, then we do it again, then they do it. Doesn’t go anywhere,” Netanyahu added.

He also said that the reason why Gaza is labelled the “biggest open-air prison in the world” is due to the fact that people are “not allowed to leave”.

"So open the gate. Let them leave,” he said.

Netanyahu further proposed that “Arab and Gulf countries finance the reconstruction” and admitted that finding the “right destination” for the population of Gaza remains “the real issue”.

Jordan and Egypt have unequivocally rejected Trump's plans. Jordan's former deputy prime minister, Mamdouh al-Abadi, called Trump's remarks "a declaration of war on the Arab people".

Content warning: Graphic images

Writer and activist Muhammad Shehada has shared a video on X that appears to show Palestinians returning to the Netzarim Corridor and finding the remains of victims killed by the Israeli military during the war on Gaza.

"Decapitated heads, rotting corpses, hacked bodies, skeletal remains discovered in the Netzarim Corridor after the [Israeli military] withdrew today", Shehada posted on X. 

"Israelis soldiers barbecued, played football and threw parties in that same corridor, right next to piles of Gazans they savagely murdered,” he added.

Middle East Eye could not independently verify the footage.

Crowds of people were seen travelling along the corridor on Sunday, passing houses reduced to rubble and stretches of wasteland, afte Hamas announced the withdrawal of Israeli military forces.

Long lines of cars were seen gathering, waiting for passage. 

Israeli forces have stormed the village of an-Nassariya in northeastern Nablus, in the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera reported

Earlier today, a pregnant Palestinian woman and her foetus were killed in the Israeli raid on the Nur Shams camp near the northern city of Tulkarm.

The assault is part of an ongoing Israeli military operation in the northern West Bank, which has resulted in the killing of dozens of Palestinians and the displacement of thousands.

Saudi Arabia has strongly condemned comments by Israel's prime minister, in which he suggested that a Palestinian state could be established on Saudi territory. 

On Thursday, Benjamin Netanyahu said during an interview with Israel's Channel 14: "The Saudis can create a Palestinian state in Saudi Arabia; they have a lot of land over there."

As a string of countries condemned the remarks, including Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Iraq, the kingdom's foreign ministry said it "appreciates the condemnation, disapproval and total rejection announced by the brotherly countries towards what Benjamin Netanyahu stated". 

In a statement published on Sunday morning, Riyadh said it categorically rejected statements that "aim to divert attention from the continuous crimes committed by the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian brothers in Gaza, including the ethnic cleansing they are subjected to". 

"This extremist, occupying mentality does not understand what the Palestinian land means to the brotherly people of Palestine and their emotional, historical and legal connection to this land," it said. 

"And it does not think that the Palestinian people deserve to live in the first place, as it has completely destroyed the Gaza Strip, killed and injured more than 160,000, most of them children and women, without the slightest human feeling or moral responsibility." 

Since the war began on 7 October 2023, Riyadh has re-emphasised its position that it would only forge ties with Israel if a Palestinian state is established with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Read More: Saudi Arabia blasts Netanyahu's call for Palestinian state on its land

Qatar condemned a comment by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, in which he suggested establishing a Palestinian state inside Saudi territory, the Qatari foreign ministry said in a statement.

Qatar, a key mediator in Gaza ceasefire negotiations between Hamas and Israel, described Netanyahu's statement as "provocative".

Netanyahu appeared to be joking on Thursday when he responded to an interviewer on Israel’s Channel 14 who mistakenly said "Saudi state" instead of "Palestinian state" before correcting himself.

A 23-year-old pregnant Palestinian woman, Sundos Jamal Mohammed Shalabi, has been killed by Israeli military forces on Sunday in the Nur Shams refugee camp near Tulkarm in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said.

Shalabi, who was eight months pregnant, was shot by Israeli gunfire, the ministry said in a statement, adding that her foetus did not survive and that Shalabi's husband was critically injured.

The ministry further stated that medical teams in Tulkarm were unable to save the child due to the Israeli forces obstructing access to medical care. 

Shalabi's killing has raised the total number of victims in Tulkarm and neighbouring camps up to six during the ongoing Israeli assault, according to the Wafa news agency.

People can travel in both directions between southern and northern Gaza following the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Netzarim Corridor on 9 February 2025. 

The Israeli military has completed its withdrawal from the Netzarim Corridor in northern Gaza on Sunday as part of an ongoing ceasefire deal.

"Israeli forces have dismantled their positions and military posts and completely withdrawn their tanks from the Netzarim Corridor on Salah al-Din Street, allowing vehicles to pass freely in both directions," a Hamas official told AFP.  

The Netzarim Corridor is a 6km stretch dividing northern and southern Gaza that was established by Israel’s military during the war to monitor and control the movement of Palestinians between northern and southern Gaza. It has also been used to launch military operations.

The arbitrary line is named after Netzarim, one of the illegal Israeli settlements that existed in the Gaza Strip before the Israeli withdrawal in 2005.

Good evening Middle East Eye readers, 

Our blog will soon be closing for the day. Here are some of today's main developments:

• The Palestinian health ministry reported 26 fatalities, including four newly killed and 22 bodies recovered, as well as five wounded people arriving at hospitals in the past 48 hours, according to Al Jazeera.

• Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei met with acting Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya and two other leaders of the Palestinian group for the first time since the Gaza ceasefire, Iranian state media reported on Saturday.

• Seven Palestinian prisoners who were among those freed by Israel on Saturday as part of the Gaza ceasefire deal were admitted to hospitals upon arriving in Ramallah, the Palestinian Prisoners Society told AFP.

• The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society has reported that most detainees freed under the ongoing ceasefire deal are suffering from serious health complications due to their treatment in Israeli prisons.

• Egypt on Saturday condemned the "irresponsible" statements made by Israeli officials suggesting the establishment of a Palestinian state on Saudi territory, according to a statement from Egypt's foreign ministry.

• Hamas has condemned US sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC), saying the move reflects the Trump administration's approach to "promote the law of the jungle".

• Unexploded bombs and shells buried beneath the ruins of Gaza could kill or injure thousands of people in the future, an aid organisation has warned.

• An Israeli drone strike on a Hezbollah site in eastern Lebanon has killed six people and wounded two others, according to Lebanese state media.

• The Palestinian Foreign Ministry has accused Israel of carrying out “ethnic cleansing” in the northern occupied West Bank and urged the international community to take decisive action to halt its crimes against refugee camps.

• Hamas has handed over three Israeli captives to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in central Gaza's Deir al-Balah, as shown on live TV.

Palestinian workers detained during the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023 were abused by Israeli prison guards, with some of them tortured to death or disappeared, according to testimonies collected by a Palestinian trade union.

Wehbe Badarneh, the legal advisor to the Arab Workers Union, told news outlet Arab48 that they had submitted an inquiry to Israeli security and military centres regarding the whereabout of 46 Palestinian workers from Gaza following their disappearance on 8 October 2023.

The Israel Prison Service gave the Palestinian union a vague response confirming the deaths of 34 workers who died inside detention centres under "mysterious circumstances or from heart attacks".

Badarneh explained that until 7 October 2023, 18,000 Palestinians from Gaza were in Israel with work permits.

However, after the attack, the Israeli authorities withdrew work authorisations for Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

Read more: Israel accused of torturing Palestinian workers to death

The Arab League is holding talks to organise a summit focused on Palestinian issues, according to assistant secretary-general Hossam Zaki.

In an interview with Al-Qahera News Channel, Zaki said no date has been set but emphasised that “the Arab stance is cohesive, and everyone stands behind the Palestinians, with Egypt and Jordan in rejecting the issue of displacement.”

US President Donald Trump’s proposal to expel Palestinians from Gaza has provoked widespread condemnation, including from key Arab allies.

Palestinians recently released from Israeli prisons have returned to a Gaza unrecognisable from the home they once knew, overwhelmed by the sheer scale of destruction.

“During our six months of detention, we were completely cut off from the world, we got no information on the war in Gaza,” said Mohammed, a freed prisoner who declined to share his last name, speaking to AFP. “The scale of the destruction shocked us, Gaza is in ruins, there is rubble everywhere.”

Israel’s relentless assault has killed over 48,000 people and injured 111,000, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, leaving the population traumatised.

The UN estimates that more than 90 percent of Gazans have been displaced at least once since the war began.

There are scenes of funerals, young men posing for group photos before their untimely killing in Israeli drone attacks, and the mothers they leave behind with sunken eyes darkened with grief.

These are some of the photographs by award-winning Palestinian-Dutch photographer Sakir Khader in his first solo exhibition hosted by Amsterdam’s FOAM museum (Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam).

Opening on 6 February and running until 14 May, Yawm al-Firak, Arabic for "Day of Separation", showcases the stories of seven Palestinian men killed by Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank and the mothers they left behind.

The exhibition is an outcome of years of on-the-ground coverage in the Palestinian territory by the 34-year-old documentary photographer and filmmaker.

Khader’s exhibition, based on work he did in the occupied West Bank since the start of 2023, blends photography with ambient sound to provide what he describes as a direct experience of life under occupation.

Read more: Life and death in the West Bank: Dutch-Palestinian photographer Sakir Khader's first solo show

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry has accused Israel of carrying out “ethnic cleansing” in the northern occupied West Bank and urged the international community to take decisive action to halt its crimes against refugee camps.

In a statement, the ministry condemned Israel’s systematic expulsion of Palestinians from camps in Jenin, Tulkarem, and Far’a, calling it a flagrant violation of international law, humanitarian law, and the Geneva Conventions.

Since launching its latest offensive on 21 January, Israeli forces have killed 25 Palestinians in Jenin and surrounding towns, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Raids have also been carried out in Qabatiya and Burqin as part of Israel’s ongoing military aggression.